For those who like Steam, what happens if Steam dies? What will happen to all of your games?

The common line seems to be "who cares about that far in the future," which is kind of sad. Most people probably don't play games that old though, like I do.

__________________I gots one of them high powered gaming computers with an EVGA GTX 480 video thingy and a Q9550 processing device and also one of them Windows 7 64 operating programs with 4GB of some Corsair 1033 DDR2 ram.

The common line seems to be "who cares about that far in the future," which is kind of sad. Most people probably don't play games that old though, like I do.

I don't expect Steam to die anytime soon, so I DON'T CARE. It's more common for old games just not to work due to incompatibility then steam dying. Even if Valve stopped making games, Steam would continue to go on because it has become a seperate entity.

I don't expect Steam to die anytime soon, so I DON'T CARE. It's more common for old games just not to work due to incompatibility then steam dying. Even if Valve stopped making games, Steam would continue to go on because it has become a seperate entity.

You don't know any of that though... who could have predicted at the height of their era that Sierra would die within 10 years? I'm not saying it is likely, but acting like Valve cannot fail in the next 20 years or more is just silly.

And you know old games that cannot play on a modern system are extremely rare Magus... I know of one or two, tops.

Despite that though, worrying about Steam closing down someday is not really the reason I turned against it. The main reason is simple: buy a retail product and you control your access to the game and when and how you play it. Buy a Steam product and Valve control your access to the game and when and how you play it. That makes the retail version much, much more valuable to me, and it's cheaper most of the time, which makes it an easy decision.

People give away their control over their game collections to Valve for the convenience of Steam, and I don't think it is worth it.

__________________I gots one of them high powered gaming computers with an EVGA GTX 480 video thingy and a Q9550 processing device and also one of them Windows 7 64 operating programs with 4GB of some Corsair 1033 DDR2 ram.

Steam dying with all games going poof is highly unlikely. What is somewhat more probable is a buyout or takeover of some sort. If that happens the most likely event is that the buyer keeps the catalogue, because it's in the interest of the buyer. A potential buyer might be a company like Microsoft (who's GFWL is pretty pathetic so far). But I think they will buy a smaller one, like GamersGate or Impulse. Anyway, I do believe that we will see some kind of merger outside Steam fairly soon.

It's very possible it will shut down someday... actually, it's almost a guarantee it will at some point, it is not going to last forever.

More importantly though, it could change... online all the time, limited access, pay-to-play, who knows. The point is Valve, or whoever else comes to control it, has the complete authority and ability to control your entire game collection, which is not a collection of products what-so-ever, but a list of access checkmarks on an account. They control your games, not you... you have no games actually, you just have an account they can take away or modify on a whim.

It's just not appealing to me anymore, even if they never do anything "wrong" with it. I just don't support the fundamental idea of entertainment as a service, I like to own things.

__________________I gots one of them high powered gaming computers with an EVGA GTX 480 video thingy and a Q9550 processing device and also one of them Windows 7 64 operating programs with 4GB of some Corsair 1033 DDR2 ram.